When Richard Mourdock, says that a pregnancy resulting from rape is God's will, it is not a gaffe. When Todd Akin says that women's bodies can block a pregnancy that occurs from legitimate rape, it is not a gaffe. When Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) says that he favors the death penalty for abortionists, it is not a gaffe. The problem republicans have with those statements isn't that they aren't true or that they don't reflect how republicans actually feel. Republicans simply would rather not say that the government should control the health care decisions of the next four generations of women until after we have put them into office. After over 1,000 pieces of legislation restricting reproductive choice introduced over the last couple of years - including the mandating of invasive, medically unnecessary procedures - no one should be deluded into thinking that republicans don't mean EXACTLY what they are saying.

These are the people who want to pick what could be the next three justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. Their presidential nominee Mitt Romney has said that he would nominate jurists who would overturn Roe v. Wade. I find it baffling that women of any political stripe would countenance the possibility that control of their uteri - and those of their daughters, grand daughters and great-granddaughters - would be ceded to the government.